A lot of people in my neck of the woods are feeling pretty lucky this week, including me. At 8.15 on Wednesday morning, I was on the number 2 bus when it got stuck in traffic near Vauxhall Cross in south London. The bus windows were steamed up, but I could hear sirens. Rubbing away the condensation, I looked out to see police on motorcycles and a couple of firemen running under the bridge.

By the time we got to Vauxhall bridge, a rumour had spread round the bus: a helicopter had crashed into a crane at St George Wharf tower. By the time we went over the bridge, we could see that the crane, still swathed in mist, was indeed broken.

My 11-year-old son had travelled that same route, to school, about 20 minutes before. Later, he expressed regret at having missed the excitement. Too many action films, not enough awareness of how dangerous and contingent life can be. He didn't see that if things had been a bit different that helicopter could have fallen on his bus, on him, on everyone in it. Despite what he thinks, just seeing that disaster would not have entertained him. It would have traumatised him.

Even as an adult, used to the sometimes terrible surprises that living in the centre of a huge city can spring, I still feel shaken after Wednesday's accident. It claimed the life of the pilot, and of pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, from Sutton, who was walking towards his office to start his day's work.

It's silly, but what I find myself thinking is how I've always hated that bloody development, ever since they started building it years ago. I hate its ugly, vulgar greed, the way that the largest number of luxury apartments possible have been crammed into the space. Those apartments haven't been created with the nurses, the police, the firemen who picked up the pieces after Wednesday's accident in mind (apart from the small number of "affordable" homes the developers were forced to include). They haven't been built with Matthew Wood in mind.

They've been built for the wealthy, as London pied-a-terres. Some of them will be owned by people so "important" that they need to be taken to their engagements by helicopter. An inquiry is to be conducted. The necessary adjustments will be made, no doubt, so that horrible, flashy developments can continue to be built, and those who buy them or make a fortune from them can fly safely over the little people, who can't afford to live where they are obliged to work. Modern life, eh?